Lollapalooza back after the pandemic – DN.SE

– It is incredibly fun and nice to finally be able to do a festival after working with it for three years or more, says Anna Sjölund, festival director at Live Nation to DN on Wednesday.

The festival area at Gärdet is under construction and will soon be ready to receive what is expected to be a significantly larger audience than in 2019, when the festival was last arranged. The forecast is around 50,000 visitors per day. The pandemic put a stop to the festivals of recent years, but about half of those who bought tickets for the canceled edition of 2020 have kept their tickets, says Anna Sjölund.

– We are very grateful to those who actually kept their tickets. It has supported us a lot. But there is also a very high pressure on the tickets now. What we see are changed buying patterns after the pandemic, but there is a great demand both in terms of arena gigs and festivals like Lollapalooza.

Remaining from 2020 are also a large part of the artists who would have performed, among them Post Malone, Pearl Jam and The Killers. Other artists have been added, such as Imagine Dragons and the Italian Eurovision winners from 2021, Måneskin. Among the quite a few Swedish acts are Alesso, Veronica Maggio, Little Jinder, Tove Lo and Benjamin Ingrosso.

New for this year’s Lollapalooza is, among other things, a stage for new music, which is arranged in collaboration with the State Council for Culture.

– We are very happy to be able to give new artists a place at the festival. It is part of the support measures that have been made where you look at the restart after the pandemic simply, how to continue to stimulate new acts and people to work in the industry, says Anna Sjölund.

Another of the artists booked already in 2020 is the Russian DJ Nina Kravitz. The star, who has been described as the country’s largest music export, was accused in the spring of supporting Putin and of not sufficiently condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Among other things, the criticism has led to Nina Kravitz being canceled from three festivals, the Dutch “The crave”, the German “Pollerwiesen” and the “Movement music festival” in the USA. It has also led to the large electronic music distributor Clone interrupting its collaboration with the DJ.

Anna Sjölund says that Live Nation is aware of the criticism, and asks to return with a written comment on the issue.

“Lollapalooza Stockholm is a place for inclusion, everyone’s equal value and peace. We follow and support all sanctions implemented for Russia “, writes Anna Sjölund later.

“We have had a personal dialogue with Nina Kraviz and after that we have a definite opinion that she distances herself from the war in Ukraine, which she also expressed in her social media. Nina Kraviz is welcome to perform as planned. ”